I don’t just mean outrage or regular rage, I mean shock that someone was to the left of “legal weed and free college but only for those that operate a successful business for 3 years in a disadvantaged community” 
takes.
I think federating took them by surprise, looking back. For about a week, those smug liberals were at a loss to even fathom what Hexbears were saying, and could only chant bullshit about how we’re Russian/Chinese bots.
Sure they still do that but they’ve slightly adapted to Hexbear presence.
Liberal here, sick to death or how condescending the democrats have become. I had a blast watching them froth at the mouths. It was beautiful.
Liberal here
Read Capital
Respectfully, Capital is probably the absolute worst starting point for socialist theory.
Something like the Manifesto, The State and Revolution, or even Blackshirts and Reds would be much better starting points IMO
I used to say the same thing, now i just point people to Graeber or Zinn and let them radicalize on their own, if they identify as liberal and want reading recommendations. Debt: The First 5000 Years did more to push me leftward than State and Revolution. I assume this would be true for most people who aren’t familiar with the context of the soviet revolution.
Capital is a great starting point if the person is a big NERD
The critique of the gotha program is very short and makes some good points about materialism.
Totally with you on that. The Capital is a “colossal” starting point. And lot’s and lot’s of theory has been written since 1894.
On the other hand, Blackshirts and Reds is an awesome place to start.
is an eye opener for libs who want to read. At least in my experience.Daddy Lenin too. In my case, I started with “Imperialism…” at the University and it was the kicker to my freefall into becoming a
.Am I an anrchiddie if I say the conquest of bread is a good starting point?
Yes. I’m not sectarian to anarchists in general, but conquest of bread is basically a fantasy novel taking itself seriously. It isnt grounded in any research. If you like the ideas presented in conquest of bread, that’s fine, but it doesn’t actually go into how those ideas can be achieved, outside of mostly “people will just spontaneously do it”
CoB is based on economic research, not magic, but absolutely is utopian in basically eliding the problem of “how would this ever be established?”
My partner double checked a bunch of the numbers he cited and he plays very loosey goosey with it.
I’m ML and haven’t read Kropotkin, but i think his idea of mutual aid as a part of evolution is really valuabe, since social darwinism has so poisoned lib thought especially in the US that most USians don’t differentiate between Darwin’s actual scientific theory and social Darwinism, to the point of believing “survival of the fittest” is a Darwin quote.
The book to go for then would be “Mutual Aid: A Factor in Human Evolution”, right? As far as I know, Conquest is mainly a utopian socialist thought experiment about how production (using technology and figures of his time) could easily provide for everyone with much less work. I think it’s valuable, just has different subject matter.
Yeah that’s the one i was thinking about. Thanks.
It honestly really irritates me how influential social darwinism has been in the US and i really wanted to rant about it lol
Liberal? Ew
I’ll be here all week.
You’ll fit right in, the secret is that we’re all liberals here. Except for the one of us each week chosen by lottery to be the leftist.
lotteryinvisible hand of the market
Our existence invalidates their entire worldview. Most online libs sense of self is that they are the good, smart people, and the only ones who could ever be opposed to them are the bad, dumb republicans (who for some reason are not irredeemable and we need a strong republican party for some reason
“I’m as left as they come, but I trust the CIA and support every US foreign policy position”
the media are bad and duplicitous and lie all the time to make money for their capitalist owners. except about Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, China, Stalin and the DPRK, I still believe all those lies because I’m a good kid and so is America
the media are bad and duplicitous and lie all the time to make money for their capitalist owners. except about Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, China, Stalin and the DPRK, I still believe all those lies because I’m a good kid and so is America
They are first and foremost, nationalists. It’s unsurprising that they accept and go along with everything when they are told “this is good for america”. As nationalists they simply bat for their team.
We have to make them stop being nationalists first in order to get that to stop happening. Then the rest opens up.
This is a good ovservation. It seems to me that historically the rise of liberalism is paralel to the rise of the nation state. This may be a historical accident or may be because merchant capital and financial capital beneft from a strong state and viceversa. One would expect that as capital becomes international the libs would become less nationalistic. But there is still a large block that would semengly go against their own material interests starting stuff with china for example.
Nationalism is a competing ideological framework to class consciousness. Get people to identify with their “nation” instead of with their class and you can get them to fight and die in your wars for you instead of turning around and pointing the guns at you, the capitalist. Nationalism essentially won out in Europe over class consciousness when it came to WW1 and even the social democrats and socialists of most of those countries embraced it and supported their countries in that war EXCEPT for in Russia where the people embraced class consciousness and communists came to power.
Yes of course. But there are many ways for the elites to repress the other clases, and this includes atacking class conciousnes. They can send people to die for god, gold and the local lord. And this has been the norm through history. The nation state is 500 years old or so. And most of that time it was limited to a small periferal area of the world.
At an ideological level, we know the main actors of history are classes. While facists and some libs think its the state.
My question is wether the nationalism in lib ideology is an accident of history. That the nation state arose do to geografical conditions that were only tangentially related to the rise of capitalism.
The alternative is that bourgeoise capitalism and the modern nation state in particular are linked in a more fundamental way.
The state itself rose as part of the need for the ruling class to have violent suppression against the classes it exploits. The nation state on the other hand is partially an accident of geography due to most people not travelling far(or having the means to), and liberalism today takes advantage of this as a tool of racial conflict dividing the working class but I think it’s most likely that this was simply a useful tool for adopting a hostile stance to indigenous populations. They’re “barbarians” therefore it is ok for us to kill them all and take their land. Very useful for colonialism.
Master race and untermenschen nazi ideas come from the ruling class justifying their right to rule as “betters”, and likely evolved as various capitalist families sought to adapt the divine right of kings to bourgeoise rule. In particular it rose during an era of far greater class conflict than we have currently today so they had a lot of cause to try and provide reasons for their rule as socialist sentiment boomed.
One would expect that as capital becomes international the libs would become less nationalistic.
American nationalism serves as a useful tool as it’s essentially the leader of the capitalist empire. If you view capitalism primarily as the imperial core(european+american global north or “international community”) exploiting the periphery (global south) with the US as the leading force of this empire then the usefulness of this nationalism kind of explains itself.
If we break the american soft-left libs out of a national mindset and into a global one where they no longer view themselves as citizens of america but instead as citizens of the world we will find ourselves a lot more allies.
Good post. Thank you for yoir toughtful response. It is very clear the state in general arose as a tool for the ruling class. I like the idea that ideological justifications such as divine rigths of kings gain importance as a funcion of class conflict. Im thinking of primitive temple states in sumeria that requiered the regular kidnaping of statless people to mantain a labor force. Or other teocratic goverments.
As for the nation state as a geografic accident. Thats what i ment if it is an acvident of history. Western europeans wer unable to form large states mostly because of their periferal position in eurasia. And since liberalism and developed in europe they just happen to develop together.
But this new state differs from previous states. There has been a trend in increasing organisation, tax base and scope of the state during the early modern era. The ancient regime be it the roman empire or grat han or more feudalistic polities rarely got a tax base of over 5%.
One exame may be tbe rise of europen trade in the indian ocean in the modern era. At that time the europeans still lacked a technological advantage. But their merchant companies were backed by the power of nation states allowing them to take more risks and corner certain markets. While the local traders originally more numerous were private concerns that did not have the cohesion of a single company.
It would also appear that certain aspects of liberalism arose once the industry of violence became separate from economic production. In a fedal system a landlord controls production because he holds the land by force of arms. It is not so for the bourgoise. That is why a strong state with a tigther mo opoly on violence becomes a concern.
Maybe this is not posible if your polity is over a certain geografical size. Maybe its not so coincidental.
As for modern libs. I was thinking that eventually a strong staye would become its own economic interest affecting the interests of capital. And we sort of see them calling for deregulation and international arbitrage tribunals and so on. Specially in the clinton years. But i guess they never trurly became internationalized.
But wat you said makes sense. Capital still has a lot of its interests tied to the political structure of empire. They become more nasionalistic now that there are international contenders.
Honestly I am not that left. I just want an internationalist world order in which the means of productions are under shared democratic rational control of the working class to enable survival on the world, sustainable eco systems and the realm of freedom which enables us to work little and enjoy being humans for the sake of being human. That isn’t that much.
I agree. I mean, you don’t even want to abolish the neurotypical hivemind of consensus reality. Sounds pretty lib to me
Yeah I’m authoritarian; I love dictatorships.
spoiler
OF THE PROLETARIAT
That might be a legit tactic. I might try it
Liberals either think or want to think they have a monopoly on being “the left wing party”. They also don’t want to think too hard, and are at their heart capitalist, which means they prefer a prescribed identity that requires no effort on their part.
One of the more interesting takes I’ve ever heard on Trillbillies podcast was that the Democratic Party is mostly a lifestyle brand at this point. One that’s designed to make the member look good, virtuous and just, but not requiring any participation. They have just enough stolen accolades that were really hard fought movements from grassroots organizing to point at so they can say “we"re the good guys”.
Well thought out and well read political leftists pose a threat to their cultural hegemony and therefore undermine their manufactured righteousness. If enough people got wind that the DNC and their voters are basically a paper tiger in the face of a fascist takeover, they will lose their cushy, do nothing lifestyles. They will either have to help us, or join the fash.
The real sad part is that it’s mostly done for treats, and even those will get taken away as soon as the austerity a lot of us are already facing really kicks in.
Can’t wait to be blamed for “taking
's grill and steaks”.I’ll have to admit I was also knocked down by seeing liberal takes that are so outside of my frame of reference I didn’t know anyone thought that way.
For example, there was this one user who had decided to die on the hill of getting rid of welfare because they felt people on it were just lazy.
For example, there was this one user who had decided to die on the hill of getting rid of welfare because they felt people on it were just lazy.
What the fuck is left to be “progressive” about to that liberal, then?
RECRUIT - MORE - LGBTQIA+ - DRONE - OPERATORS?
¯\(•_•)/¯
I got the impression that they were English, in which case there’s a trend amongst liberals to be huge fans of austerity. Partly because that’s what Blair used to fund bailing out the banks during the financial crash, partly because there’s been a concerted push since then to propagandise everyone on benefits as lazy so that people are less bothered by further austerity.
I had to make a new main account on a different instance so I could maintain access to HexBear communities. I am so thrilled to finally be interacting with a community of actual leftists! Drag me further to the left daddies✊
Change over to a hexbear account so we don’t see “lemme.ee” at the end of your name. I try not to, but I judge those users a lot more critically. (Half joke)
But really, welcome and hope you find what you’re looking for!
The hexbear account comes with the best emojis in the world.
what’s funny are the ones who think we’re right-wing because they’ve never heard anyone criticize liberals from the left before
“I’m good because I’m left of conservatives, and nobody’s better than me, so obviously if somebody is to the left of me they’re lying”
Wait, we’re not conservatives? Then why have we been celebrating our big wet boy?
God, to have a badonkadonk like that
Regarding competing ‘echo chambers’, we’ve been inoculated to liberalism because we get exposed to it on a nonstop near-daily basis in our work/social/ whatever lives and come here to gripe about that specicifically, meanwhile these libs have literally never been exposed to opinions to their left because they’re used to living in exclusively
curated spaces.also I’m not a bot I’m a vocaloid, gosh
Hahah I see that same shock even on Hexbear. I get called a troll for being dronegender. They think a position as left as mine could only be a conservative joke. That’s just background radiation to my life at this point. I’ll stick around and see if things change and if this community gets over its shock that I exist
I think people are touchy cause it’s close to some right-wing memes. I made a post about it earlier and got your posts undeleted. people should be more charitable now.
Hey thanks, that’s really nice
A lot of them encountered the very thing they’ve been conditioned to feel disgust towards, and for a lot of them maybe for the very first time in their lives in a conversational capacity. These are people who are inundated on a near-daily basis with propaganda designed to twist the socialist narrative into one of death and destruction that leads to the inevitable collapse of all civilizations unfortunate enough to let it take root.
I don’t think that the average liberal is totally apathetic towards everyone but themselves (I think a lot of us have probably identified as such before, be it as a child or long into adulthood,) but their ideas on human rights, social justice, and broader politics are incredibly underdeveloped. When you don’t have a considerable wealth of knowledge or experience to draw on, you’re a reactionary subject to the pull of your own gut feelings and the preconceived notions instilled in you by your peers.
What I’m getting at is that I think it’s important to realize that a lot of the libs pissing their pants at the sight of evil tankies have absolutely no idea what a tankie is or does, and everything they do know is buried under 10 layers of disinformation. This doesn’t absolve them of their crimes of grand dumbassery, but I think it’s worth considering that a lot of these people would probably agree with much of what we had to say were we to peel back the layers of their programming. Alas, that isn’t often realistic and frankly isn’t solely* our responsibility.
*edit
hexbear is definitely to the left of all the sites we federated to, and there has been some shit takes by our feddie comrades that were fun to laugh and dunk on, but i feel like we do have a responsibility to educate the other instances so long as they are willing to be educated. like im not at all against giving the other feds like blajah a second chance if they listen to us and understand why they suck.
hexbear is definitely to the left of all the sites we federated to
I don’t think it’s really to the left of lemmygrad, though I wouldn’t say the reverse either
most of you libs are libs like lemmygrad but I, the one true leftist am certainly to lemmygrad’s left
ok bordiga
when people live in an echo chamber, the outside is scary and confusing
Sure, Hexbear was its own kind of echo chamber, but I think it got a weird sense of solidarity overall and the internal struggle sessions were mitigated somewhat by just how sheer fucking liberal the federated communities were revealed to be next door.
Especially programming.dev. What the fuck is up with those cryptofascists?
It’s hilarious to see people call this place an echo chamber.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more divided group on literally any given topic.
I can say the word cats and start an argument where I’m taking shit from three different sides, pretty sure thats not an echo chamber.
cats
Gulag!
You get plenty of good folks in programming, but you also get high volumes of:
- Stemlords
- Bazingas
- Temporarily embarrassed millionaires
- Labor aristocrats
- Misogynists
Lots of underlying drivers of reactionary thought.
Desperately pushing aside the fascist and libertarian programmers to reach the hot trans stalinist in the back row
Aren’t they pretending to believe we’re all Republicans doing a three year long larp as leftists?
YOU ARE A BOT
YOU ARE A BOT
YOU ARE ALL BOTS
Sounds exactly like what a poorly programmed bot would say.
Everyone I don’t like is a bot, a bedtime story for Main Characters
They’ve got to finish their LitRPG harem audiobook first
None of you are free from Haskel! 🤖
I knew it wasn’t going to be long before they started calling us MAGA Communists. They can’t fathom people who can laugh at Trump and not be completly deranged over him destroying DEMOCRACY ™ so we have to secretly be supporting him.
It’s almost as if there was no democracy to begin with
him destroying DEMOCRACY ™
How can Trump destroy what never existed? They treat the government and it’s institutions like some sacred cow, the world would be better off if the US balkanized and disintegrated into an impotent power.
That’s their latest thing yeah. “Well see you both agree with Republican ideas of isolationism and therefore you must ACTUALLY be right wing.”
Libs plz. We believe in US isolationism because we want the US to stop fucking around with the rest of the world and leave the rest of the world alone to figure itself out without being bombed and coerced into doing what the US wants the world to do. The right believes in US isolationism because they’re nationalists who believe the US should only help ourselves and should never help anyone outside our borders. We’re literally polar opposites. There is no overlap in those 2 viewpoints.
Republicans, famous isolationists who opposed the Iraq War
When we say “isolationism” we mean “quarantine”…
im not so much a us isolationist but more so i want the usa to stop doing things overseas on account that it stops existing altogether
Suddenly they’re not “as left as they come, but…” They’re just sniveling fascist with
“I’m as left as they come but somebody’s really gotta do something about all these undesireab… I mean homeless cluttering up MY public spaces.”
No, must have missed that being posted on the front page for weeks
Them disliking us is a given. Them being surprised by Hexbear’s takes was novel to me.
I’m curious, weren’t you once at least a little bit like them?
Being surprised by Hexbear’s takes?
Well at one point, yes, I did feel genuine surprise that people existed that didn’t like liberalism coming from the left, if that’s what you mean. I learned about that in my 20s.
How do you guys feel about democratic socialism? I feel like it’s the only realistic way to get socialism without bloodshed - though I also understand the US is a long goddamn way away.
Be gentle pls, I’m still learning ❤️
Edit: thanks for all the replies!! There’s a ton to read through so bear with me
Look up the Spanish civil war. Democratic Socialists won the government through elections and all of the right wing elements in the country banded together to overthrow what was a mildly socialist government. Take note of how Hitler’s Germany aided the Right faction under Franco, but no liberal nations aided to rightfully elected socialist government. Great Britain, France, and the US all decided to stay neutral as a military dictatorship overthrew one of their peers.
My point is that right wing elements won’t let you vote away their power. And that liberal governments, while they nominally espouse the rule of law and democracy, will let fascism run over socialist movements.
They just didn’t vote hard enough.
That isnt true, those “neutral” countries were actually helping Germany rearm, so were indirectly contributing to the Franco faction
This nonviolent stuff’ll get you killed - Charles Cobb
instructive example; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende
Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He became the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.
As president, Allende sought to nationalize major industries, expand education and improve the living standards of the working class. He clashed with the right-wing parties that controlled Congress and with the judiciary. On 11 September 1973, the military moved to oust Allende in a coup d’état supported by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
